WWE Tough Enough Recap, 6/30/2015: ‘Swamp Stories’

Hi there! Helluva day, wasn’t it? I hope everyone is well

Last week saw Hank going bye-bye after Paige took a flamethrower to his sorry ass for demeaning women while Josh and ZZ survived for simply being there. Looking at this episode’s title, it looks like we’re gonna have a ZZ-centric episode…so let’s settle in.

We are LIVE(!) from Full Sail University for Tough Enough!
Chris Jericho and Renee Young are your hosts. They introduce Hogan, Paige and Daniel Bryan.
Bryan says that he wants to see more character from the competitors. Paige just resorts to calling them all “boring, which is sad”. Hogan doesn’t see it that way, brother. Yes, he even calls Paige “Brother”. Chris likes when Hogan calls Paige “brother” and we get the first set of clips.

WWE PERFORMANCE CENTER

The Barracks
Josh hangs out with a couple of the girls who are, like OMG, sooooo surprised Josh was in the Bottom 3 last week. Josh tells the camera that he feels like everyone’s scheming. After the jump-cut, everyone in the cast is suddenly in the room. Amanda brags about beating Gabi and, ruh-roh, 3 and a half minutes in, the gloves are off. Gabi wants Amanda to go home. So does Daria. Dianna isn’t happy about Amanda’s yapping. So, Amanda gets right in her face and talks shit about Dianna and her fiance and, suddenly, all we can hear is the sound of women screaming at each other while the men stand around, wondering how the hell they got on the set of The Bachelor. The result? After Amanda trash-talks to everybody in within a three-block radius, everyone somehow hates Dianna. (DANIELLE: “Editing, PAL!”)

But enough of that, Alex doesn’t know anything about wrestling. This makes Patrick mad! MAD!!! REALLY MAD!!! And he yells at Alex really LOUD!!! Alex violently shakes his head at Patrick like Ali’s throwing punches and declares, “KNOWLEDGE MEANS NOTHING, BRO”, a phrase so deep, I cannot possibly reflect on its subtle, yet playful, near-literary symbolism.

FLORIDA’S EVERGLADES

Wild Florida’s Ultimate Wilderness Air Boat
The contestants get brought out to an island in the middle of the Glades. Booker, Billy Gunn and Lita announce that this is the next challenge. Booker tells them to look around and take a good, steamy look at the gator-infested swamp. A “gator expert” shows the contestants “what can hurt them” by bringing out a wittle baby gator. D’awwwww! Then he loses control of it and nearly gets his hand bitten off. (DANIELLE: SAVE HIM, ZZ! GO HELP HIM, “GATOR”!!!) Amanda is afraid that they’re gonna “die”.

The challenge is as follows: swim over to their floaty boat of doom, grab a WWE belt and swim back to shore with it — all without being mutilated and/or eaten by alligators. Please? The WWE would like to get through this exercise without a pending lawsuit. So, make sure nothing kills you. To add a fun little wrinkle to things: Patrick, the token black guy…he can’t swim.

(DANIELLE: …I…oh…)

Yeah. WWE went there. Dianna is afraid of dark water and the movie, “Lake Placid”. That ruined her for life. But, hey! Ironically, she’s first. Patrick still can’t swim and “Gator”, for all his bragging, is practically just inches ahead or behind Patrick, depending on the camera angle. Alex nearly drowns until the medics leap into the horrible, non-gator-infested waters to “save” him. (DANIELLE: ZZ is 0-for-fucking-2 in the “saving people in the swamp”. Not good.) Dianna gets back to shore, so she’s cool. Booker laughs at Patrick which just doubles down on 11 and raises the table $50,000 dollars and gold watch in terms of presenting racist stereotypes. Tanner “beats” Josh to shore but we could be wrong. Josh claims Tanner cheated, so that ends in a manly shoving match which only takes Booker saying “Hey, guys, now…” to make them stop.

Alex is stuck and barely gets to the boat. He doesn’t even swim back to the island as the crew helps him get to “safety” while the “dangerous gators that could murder you at any time” float there, doing nothing. (DANIELLE: Waiting for the production team to take them back to the plastic prop store.) Back on the island, Booker congratulates the winners and shames Mada and Alex for their failure. Billy Gunn channels R. Lee Ermey and chews out Daria for dropping her belt. The team leaves on an air boat while Patrick and Alex mope. (DANIELLE: Alex was right: knowledge don’t mean shit when you can’t swim.)

FULL SAIL UNIVERSITY

Arena
Renee Young informs us that Gabi created a CAW and challenged Nikki Bella to a fight on WWE 2K15 over Twitter. She even has the balls to label it #DreamMatch. (DANIELLE: Nikki better watch out. Gabi can manhandle Summer Rae on “Easy” mode.)

WWE PERFORMANCE CENTER

Barracks
Tanner and Josh argue while playing pool while Daria and Giorgia talk and agree to take down Dianna. Dianna and Gabi, however, form their own faction and nothing is remotely interesting about this except that both pairs share matching first initials. Gabi is skeptical but is willing to accept a temporary partnership. Patrick watches the whole thing, eye-fucking them from the comfort of the pool table and then tries to instigate a threesome by making them “kiss and make up”. Dianna’s disgusted and leaves. (DANIELLE: She didn’t stay for a lesbian make-out session on WWE programming? Oh, she’s definitely gone now.) Patrick offers to kiss Gabi and, at this point, the moment is so awkward, Gabi’s blank stare seems sexy in comparison. Meanwhile, Mada gets on his APPLE IPHONE™ and facetimes with his hot blonde wife and his child in a fairly touching moment.

The next day…

The Gym
Roman Reigns is in the ring and each woman competitor swoons and wrings out their panties as per contractual obligation. Reigns is edited down with a soft glow like a picture on Instagram. Reigns introduces himself and wants to know if they wanna get beat up. He demos a move, using a couple of trainers. The men watch, stunned, as Medium Show crushes Almost Fandango off the top rope. The women, however, are still inside of Fifty Shades of Grey, wishing Reigns would crush them under his weight over and over and over.

FULL SAIL UNIVERSITY

Arena
Meanwhile, back at the set of Kitchen Stadium, Chris Jericho admits that Roman Reigns even turns him on. Daniel Bryan’s got a boner, too, while Hogan and Paige talk about what the competitors need to do. These segments are really kinda worthless and should be limited to the beginning and end, at most. Jericho explains the voting system, telling people to “vote who you want to win” in case you have NO idea how “voting” works.

Back at the Gym
The men take falls backward. Roman Reigns isn’t involved in any of this. (DANIELLE: Having most likely exploded from his own sexiness.) Then it’s time for the competitors to take falls off of the top turnbuckle. Gabi fails miserably, being “afraid of heights” of about five feet or more and everyone lands on their backs, heads and tailbones. (DANIELLE: Who needs goddamn alligators?) Lita names Giorgia the women’s winner while Booker proclaims Patrick the guy’s winner. (DANIELLE: White men can’t fall either, I guess.) Billy tells them that there will be a loser today.

The Barracks
–are arguing about…oh. Sorry. It happened that fast after the break. I didn’t even have fucking time to type what happened. Daria is shamed and Dianna just yells about bitch-asses and theoretical women-hanging-onto-cliffs. In the next room — I can’t even make this up if I was tripping — Giorgia and ZZ listen to the argument through the wall using cups as hearing aid devices. The rest of the case does the “cup-to-wall” bullshit which defeats the point because you can already hear everything.

Dianna sexually bribes ZZ into switching rooms with her so that ZZ can mess with her roommate. (DANIELLE: What, was the roommate like, “ZZ’s gonna live with me? AWESOME!” I don’t think that happened…)

FULL SAIL UNIVERSITY

Arena
Jericho says it’s time for the judges to ask competitors questions.

Patrick and Alex are called up by Daniel Bryan. He commends them for not being able to swim. He asks what Alex what he meant with his  “Knowledge means nothing quote”. Alex replies that it’s a physical game, not a mental one. Patrick (DANIELLE: …kisses Bryan’s ass…) agrees with that (DANIELLE: Same thing.) and Daniel Bryan agrees with Patrick’s assessment and everyone agrees that Alex is the new Confucius. Paige snaps everyone back to reality, calling Alex a moron while Hogan agrees with Paige.

Hogan gets weird and tells ZZ that “The Rock eats the best pie”. He wants to know what kind of “pie” ZZ likes to eat. Daniel Bryan follows up with an actual tough question: “What do you want to see when you’re in the women’s bedroom?” Hogan follows this up with where Dianna is sleeping. Dianna talks about how ZZ left a pair of dirty underwear in her room and she can smell them. Best show ever.

Paige ends the ZZ suck-up party and calls up Amanda and Sarah. She admonishes them both for being phonies and tells them to step back.

Hogan verbally berates Mada and we end that.

Here’s your Bottom 3: 

  1. Alex (Bryan – Alex needs to have more discipline)
  2. Sarah (Paige – Sarah has no personality)
  3. Dianna (Hogan – She wins challenges but hates people)

When we come back, the Bottom 3 appeals:

  1. Sarah – She’s herself. She gave up everything for all of this. She just hasn’t been “showcased”. She won’t jump into the camera and fight with people.
  2. Alex – Alex can’t decide who should go home but finally names Dianna, the popular answer. They ask him one question with ten seconds left to answer and he talks about exhibiting courage though he’s kinduva loser.
  3. Dianna – Dianna is hot, blonde and fights. And she’s BEST FOR BUSINESS™.

Daniel Bryan, Paige and Hogan don’t want to save anyone. (DANIELLE: Then why have that stupid rule if you aren’t gonna use it?)

GOING HOME: Alex.

That is it for this week. Let’s tune in next week when we try to remember the names of everyone because they’re so unmemorable.

Er…that’s it.

Matt Perri
Matt Perrihttp://mattperri.wordpress.com
Matt Perri is one of those literary Ronin you’ve never heard of until he shows up and tells you he’s a literary Ronin. He’s a native Californian, a film buff, old school gamer geek, and a sports/entertainment fan. A lifelong Giants, 49ers and Sharks fan, he also covers the world of pro-wrestling, writing recaps for WWE Monday Night RAW and Total Divas at Scott’s Blog of Doom. You can follow the guy on Twitter via @PerriTheSmark as well as here at The Workprint and his own blog, Matt's Entertainment.

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